~ The Incorrigible Market Monetarist

Trump’s failed presidency just keeps getting worse

I can’t say that I agree with Chuck Schumer, a senator from my state, on much of anything. Tonight, however, I stand united with him in opposition to Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior, swinging from one bad decision coming out of left field to the next, culminating to this point in reneging on his OWN budget compromise.

Don’t misunderstand. I loathe big government and, assuming appropriate planning and consensus, I would applaud if it were all shut down tomorrow on a more permanent basis. One layer of big government down, and at least one more layer to go as far as I’m concerned.

There are, however, at least two things about Trump’s behavior during the current round of budget rigmarole that are quite irksome.

The first point is all about the embarrassing televised “negotiation” between Trump and Democratic leaders, where Trump demanded funding for his border wall and was quite emphatic about his willingness to shut the government down until he got it, all of this despite his campaign pledge to build the wall and…. To make Mexico pay for the wall. Seems as if the funding of the wall hasn’t quite gone as planned, and so now, taxpayers must pay for the wall which, as far as I am concerned, wasn’t part of the deal.

Trump subsequently agrees to a budget deal minus most of the requested funding for the wall. It passes the Senate unanimously (a rarity indeed!). Trump then informs Speaker Ryan that he won’t sign it. WTF?! All of that wasted time on a deal made in bad faith. And that is exactly what it is on Trump’s part – bad faith dealing.

What makes this even more of a circus-like spectacle is that Speaker Ryan has taken the budget deal back to work on it some more with almost nothing left of a spine. Ryan has only a few weeks to go before retirement, and it’s quite a terrible way to go out trying to clean up after Trump’s lack of integrity as if he’s Trump’s new fixer. Ryan should, instead, say something like, “This is your deal, eat it Bucco,” send it to Trump anyway, let him veto it, and then stick him with an override. I seriously doubt that there is a lack of votes to override a Trump veto, at least on this; the principle of the matter counts for far more than the substance. And Congress should do that with everything from here until Trump is done, if for no other reason than put him in his place.

Additionally, I wrote some time ago about Trump’s desire to end the military engagement in Syria and my opinion of it hasn’t changed. In a perfect world, it would be an ideal thing to do. But the problem is that we don’t live in a perfect world, the entanglement came with the Office, and there is a price to be paid by the people left behind if we leave before there is a political settlement between the Kurds in Syria and the Turkish government. Such a settlement does not exist, and I think I understand the point Defense Secretary Mattis is making with his resignation. In the position of Mattis, I wouldn’t be a part of this poor choice either, not just for the sake of the Kurds, but also due to the bad faith involved in leaving them to fend for themselves in the face of ethnically motivated Turkish aggression.

The order given by Trump to bugout of Syria is beyond awful and well into the realm of horrifyingly tragic, and the lack of support for this is bipartisan. Yet, Trump will do what he will in violation of common sense, regardless of the cost in lives and enduring bad faith and contempt.

All of this is on top of the steaming pile Trump refers to as trade policy, policy conduct that has gone so swimmingly that the government has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in injury payments to soybean farmers. Of course, these payments to the soybean farmers are the only such payments I’ve heard about, and it would not surprise me in the slightest if these are only the tip of the iceberg. To injure people with a trade war we didn’t want and then tax single-mom waitresses to pay for its predictable utter failure as the policy continues unabated is nothing but sheer tyrannical bullshit. The farcical trade war needs to go as soon as yesterday. If Trump doesn’t take it away, he needs to be shown the door in a manner that ensures it hits him in the rear and leaves a lasting impression.

Quotable Quotes

"The desire is there to do something about difficult problems, but because it is difficult to do something which would help solve them, people do something else instead." -- Dr. Madsen Pirie, Adam Smith Institute